Human Rights: Off the Rails?

In the 1970's and early 1980's, the United States led the world in the
crusade for human rights. Now we are being criticized for retaining capital
punishment and for our treatment of Al-Qaida detainees. Has the United States
lost its way? Or has the human rights movement?

The criticisms of our treatment of Al-Qaida suggest it's the latter. The
Hague Convention of 1907 lists four criteria defining prisoners of war: being
subject to responsible command, wearing signs recognizable at a distance,
carrying arms openly, and following the rules of war. Terrorists do none of
these (they do have a chain of command, but it accepts no responsibility, or
more accurately, permits any actions against its enemies.) Clearly the people
who insist on giving the detainees prisoner of war status have no idea what's in
the Hague Convention. The Geneva Convention forbids "unnecessary
restraints," but clearly restraints are necessary on prisoners who have
already engaged in bloody uprisings against their captors.

What happened? There appear to be two causes at work:

Many authoritarian regimes have signed human rights instruments without
having the slightest intention of obeying them. They can get away with this
because there are no institutions in these regimes capable of forcing the
government to live up to its obligations. Frequently they sign on in
exchange for promises of aid. They have also discovered they can embarrass
their critics by signing human rights accords and then pointing to any
shortcomings on the part of their critics as proof of hypocrisy.

The human rights movement has been co-opted in many ways by groups pushing
specific socio-political agendas, for example, abortion or abolition of
capital punishment.

An Example of What's Right and Wrong

The Humana World Human Rights Guide (third edition, 1993) is still a useful
document. It would be wonderful to see an update, since the book doesn't include
changes due to the breakup of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia (the cutoff for
data was 1991). Iran, with a very low score in 1991, has probably moved up at
least a bit. On the other hand, large portions are still valid.

The ratings in the book are based on 40 questions derived from UN human
rights declarations, with extra weighting given to torture, capital punishment,
slavery and arbitrary arrest. Countries are rated on a scale of 0 to 100. The
global average was 62, with Burma (Myanmar) and Iraq tied for bottom ranking
with 17 and Finland in the top spot at 99 (they lost a point for minor
inequality between men's and women's wages).

Countries with ratings of 90 or above were Australia, Austria, Belgium,
Benin, Canada, Costa Rica, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany,
Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden,
Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay. The encouraging thing about
this ranking is how quickly some former Communist countries moved to the top
rankings. Portugal, ruled by a fascist dictatorship until the mid-1970's, is
also up there. Spain, long ruled by the dictator Francisco Franco, doesn't quite make
the list but has a very respectable score of 87. Change for the better is
possible.

One thing that is striking about the list is that most of the countries are
far smaller than the United States and most of them are culturally homogeneous.
Achieving human rights in a large, culturally heterogeneous country is
inherently more difficult than doing it in a small country. When we look at the
countries of more than 100 million population, we find Bangladesh (59), Brazil
(69), China (21), India (54), Indonesia (34), Japan (82), Mexico (64), Nigeria (49),
Pakistan (42), Soviet Union (54) and the United States (90). Only Japan and the
United States have good ratings. The U.S. principally loses points for capital
punishment and for inequalities, Japan for capital punishment, inequality of
women, censorship and restrictions on free legal aid.

In view of criticisms of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, it's instructive
to compare the ranking of Israel (76) with Egypt (50), Jordan (65), Lebanon (not
ranked due to chaotic conditions) Syria (30), Iraq (17), Iran (22), and Libya
(24). Not only is Israel ranked higher than all its enemies, but there seems to
be a direct correlation between rabid hostility toward Israel and low human
rights rankings. Only Egypt and Jordan, which have fairly moderate stances
toward Israel, have even mediocre rankings. As Fareed Zakaria wrote in Newsweek
(October 15, 2001, p. 36):

Israel treats its 1 million Arabs as second class citizens, a disgrace on
its democracy. And yet the tragedy of the Arab world is that Israel accords
them more political rights and dignities than most Arab nations give to their
own people.

What's Wrong

I need to stress, since I will critique the Humana Human Rights guide in some
ways, that on the whole it is an immensely useful document, with a sound
methodology, and robust enough that those places where it can be criticized are
not sufficient to diminish its usefulness greatly. In short, while I disagree
with a few of its questions, I can live with the findings.

As useful as I consider the Humana guide, its shortcomings illustrate where
the human rights movement has gone awry. The questionnaires were distributed to
a variety of organizations some of which have their own agendas. There is not,
for example, a single religious organization, but there is Planned Parenthood.

The guide's measures break down in several respects. First of all, they do
not take into account whether or not the regime is satisfactory to its own
subjects. Saudi Arabia (29) and Kuwait (33) have pretty low scores. Neither
brooks dissent, and in Saudi Arabia Islam is mandatory (although they do look
the other way to some extent with regard to foreigners). On the other hand, we
do not see substantial numbers of Saudis and Kuwaitis leaving, even though many
are affluent enough to go anywhere they want. Singapore's authoritarian regime
(60) seems to enjoy wide support among its citizens.

Second, the guide fails to take into account the stresses on a country.
Turkey, with a score of 44, is under pressure by leftists, Kurdish separatists
and Islamic extremists (and the situation has gotten worse since 1991). Israel,
with 76, has been in a state of siege for fifty years. Czechoslovakia, with a
score of 97, lost a point on judicial independence because - unbelievably - it
was replacing former Communist judges. In other words, replacing a corrupt
judiciary caused the country to lose points for human rights.

Finally, scores can be skewed by access to information. This doesn't seem to
be a problem for the Humana guide, which collects data from a wide variety of
sources and critically evaluates the results, but can be for other groups. I
once saw an Amnesty International report in which the section on Belgium was
almost as long as on North Korea. It seems that some Belgian soldiers got out of
control on a field exercise and roughed up some prisoners (other Belgian
soldiers) during interrogation. (This, by the way, is why the U.S. military
explicitly forbids soldiers from conducting interrogations during maneuvers
without training - it can too easily get out of hand.) So Belgium (96 on the
Humana scale) and North Korea (20) were treated nearly the same. The difference,
of course, is that Belgium is an open society in which even trivial violations
are revealed, and North Korea a closed society where even massive violations can
go undiscovered. The Rodney King beating produced smug feelings of superiority
in many countries where far worse beatings are routine and unreported.

Authoritarian "Rights Supporters"

New human rights documents are enthusiastically signed by regimes that
transparently have not the slightest intent of respecting them. They do so in
many cases to retain or acquire eligibility for aid, but also because corrupt
regimes have become very skillful at playing the cultural diversity game.

The Humana guide describes some of these complaints

"Opposition to the measuring of rights and classifying countries also
centers on the perception that the purpose has a Western liberal bias. This
is undeniably true."

"critics claim that classifications of human rights ignore traditions
and customs, religion and history, all of which will affect the final
results."

"the binding treaties may be criticized for appearing to favor the
more prosperous countries.."

Authoritarian regimes have learned that they can blunt human rights
criticisms by accusing their critics of cultural insensitivity and
ethnocentrism. They can point to occasional minor lapses in countries that do
respect human rights as evidence that their critics have no moral standing. And,
since they have no intention of being held accountable to their obligations,
they can then appear to hold the moral high ground against the United States,
which gives careful scrutiny to treaties because it does expect to honor
them.

Some blame attaches to the West for this state of affairs because we
carelessly lump "rights" into a single bin instead of setting
priorities. For example, instead of listing "equality of sexes during
marriage" (Item 37) as a basic right, a question which inherently penalizes
some cultures, maybe we should think a bit harder about what we really
all agree on as a necessary protection for women.

Co-Optation by Interest Groups

One key reason the United States has objected to signing some rights accords
is the inclusion of provisions injected by various pressure groups for the
specific purpose of circumventing or abolishing existing law.

The clearest example of this process in the Humana guide is its treatment of
capital punishment. Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights does not prohibit capital punishment, but limits it only to the
most serious crimes, requires that the sentence be imposed by a lawful court,
permits amnesty or commutation, and clearly encourages abolition. So why is
question 11 "Capital punishment by the State?" Why doesn't the
question accurately reflect the ICCPR and ask whether capital punishment is
limited only to the most serious crimes, whether sentence is imposed by a lawful
court, and whether the legal system permits amnesty or commutation? Clearly the
question has been tailored to the interest groups that oppose capital
punishment.

On the other hand, several articles of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights are conspicuous by their absence from any of the questions. Article 29
states:

Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the full and
free development of his personality is possible.

In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only
to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of
securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and
of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general
welfare in a democratic society.

These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the
purposes and principles of the United Nations

Could we not say this article is violated by social programs that undermine
the work ethic and sense of social duty or create an expectation of entitlement, or by judicial processes that fail to punish
criminals who show disrespect for the rights and freedoms of others? Certainly
evaluation of whether a society arbitrarily intervenes in private affairs has to
be tempered with the right of a society to "meet the just requirements of
morality." So when the Humana guide points out that "[U.S.] State laws
vary in tolerance of homosexuality and sexual deviants," it is interjecting
a very specifically ideological definition of morality to the exclusion of those
opinions that hold homosexuality and sexually deviant behavior to be immoral.

Article 30 states "Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as
implying for any State, group, or person any right to engage in any activity or
to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms
set forth herein."

Article 29.3 and Article 30 can be interpreted as effectively stripping the
protections of the UDHR from people who seek to strip others of their rights. In
other words, people who seek to impose dicatorial regimes cannot appeal to U.N.
human rights declarations if their government moves against them. Certainly
terrorist groups fall under this rubric.

Suggestions

One of the principal failures of the human rights movement has been an
inability to sort out the different categories of rights. Real, inalienable
human rights are pretty few in number and are mostly listed in the Declaration
of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. People have the
right to protection from arbitrary punishment and the right to pursue their own
lives subject to consideration for the rights of others.

Most of the rights in the Bill of Rights are mechanisms useful in our society
for protecting the basic rights: freedom of speech and of the press, trial by
jury, right of appeal, and so on. These are not rights in themselves, but
procedures we have found useful, and that seem to be widely applicable. There
may be other mechanisms that work for other societies.

Then there are "rights" that are nonexistent.

An obligation on one party's part does not imply a right on someone else's
part. There is no such thing as a right to receive money, goods, or services
from anyone else. Social benefits and health care are charities, not
rights. We would feel that a society with enormous wealth that didn't use
some of it to help its less fortunate was pretty messed up, but that society
would be failing to meet its obligations, not violating the rights
of its citizens.

Justice is result, not process. A court proceeding that convicts an
obviously innocent person is unjust regardless of whether or not the letter
of the law is followed. So is a proceeding that frees an obviously guilty
person. Due process is a system that tries to ensure that results are just,
but the bottom line must always be the facts, not whether some recipe was
followed. There is no such thing as a right to loopholes.

There is no such thing as a right to sexual activity. If there were,
anyone who couldn't find a sexual partner would have the right to demand sex
from someone. Some of the absurdities that flow from the idea that sex is a
"right" include the demand that Viagra be covered by health
insurance. ("Otherwise rich people would be able to have better sex
lives than poor people." And the part of that concept that's new is
...? When was the last time Donald Trump couldn't find a date?)
Another absurd case involved a Wisconsin man who had
fathered a large number of children and was not supporting any of them. A
court ordered him not to father any more children until he supported the
ones he had already fathered. He appealed, and was backed by some civil
liberties advocates, arguing that his right to sex was being abridged.
Fortunately the court disagreed.
Say what? You have a right to father children and
pass the cost of their support along to society? Because you don't want to
wear a condom and don't have the guts to get a vasectomy?

We call rights "rights" because of a conviction that they flow
from a system of right and wrong, and that there are some things, like
arbitrarily killing someone, that are just plain wrong. There cannot be any
such thing as a "right" to do what is morally wrong. We may
restrain ourselves from policing some things because we don't believe we can
do so fairly, or because the police power could easily get out of hand. It
doesn't follow that people have a "right" to do those things.
Prohibition failed; it doesn't follow that you have a right to abuse
alcohol, still less that you have a right to rehabilitation programs or a
right to protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

One last observation. A human rights organization that does not make its
highest priority the protection of innocent, law-abiding people is not a human
rights organization.